Causation and Mental Causation

Causation has been widely investigated in the recent philosophy of science and theories have been proliferating over the last decades. At the same time, the problem of mental causation has played a pivotal role in recent debates in the philosophy of mind. It seems, however, that little or insufficient dialogue and exchange has been developed between these two fields of research. On the one hand, scholars looking for general interpretations of causation have rarely faced up to issues arising from mental causation, or discussed explicitly the framework and constraints that their proposals impose upon mental causation. On the other hand, philosophers dealing with mental causation have often neglected or underestimated current theories and recent reflections on the nature of causality, avoiding discussion of their possible implications for mental causation. The situation is slowly and gradually changing as an effect, among other things, of epistemological investigations within neuroscience, psychiatry, and clinical psychology, but the relations between philosophical accounts of causation and theories of mental causation are still worth deeper consideration. This issue of Humana.Mente intends to support and stimulate the interaction and exchange between the philosophy of causality and the research dealing with mental causation. It thus aims to address the following issues: • whether and how different interpretations of causation ((neo)mechanistic models, counterfactual approaches, conserved quantity and mark transmission theories, manipulationist theories, graphical modelling) may contribute to the interpretation of mental causation and influence a metaphysical or epistemological understanding of the topic; • whether and how the debate over, specifically, mental causation can impact on such theories of causation; • which ideas and conceptions of causality are presupposed or implied by recent debates and arguments about mental causation (e.g., Kim's exclusion argument); • to what extent the problem of mental causation presents special features, and how the analysis of its peculiarity may strengthen a pluralistic view of causation; • how epistemological inquiries in specific areas (like neuroscience, psychiatry, psychology) may provide a deeper insight into mental causation and challenge current general perspectives on causation.